Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/226

 she did not die before the butcher's mallet should strike her.

They found her unconscious, and breathing heavily; the sun had struck her and made her, for the hour, insensible to all her pain.

'She is a jade, but we must not kill her, or they will call us to account,' said the old steward to his man.

So they halted there for her sake as well as for that of the oxen, and laid her down upon the ground, and tried what rough surgery they knew to call back the senses that the sun had slain.

The illness in a few hours passed off her, and she regained the consciousness of her unutterable misery.